Who is Cin7 most suitable for?

Being able to research and know which inventory system is best for your business whilst also running your business is near impossible.

Accountants and businesses come to us directly to help select and implement a system for them. But, if you’re not at the stage, would you know when your business needs one, which system is best for you and at what point you might need to contact us?

We have chosen to write about Cin7 and will outline which types of businesses and features we’ve found this inventory system is great for.

At a glance, Cin7 is usually better for businesses or accounting clients who:

Use multiple marketplaces to sell such as Magento, Shopify, Amazon and eBay.

Want the use of omnichannel.

Need stock and order visibility.

Outsource fulfilment to 3PL companies or manage internally.

Need to manage multiple warehouses with complex products and detailed order processing.

Have got and are willing to invest time and money into a proper system set-up and staff training.

Cin7 is one of the three inventory systems we implement more frequently for our clients. The types of businesses we have found it most suitable for (in our personal experience) is SME Manufacturers, Wholesalers and Fashion Retailers.

Businesses that buy and sell products end up working so well with Cin7 due to the vast amount of features available that helps make selling products online or instore a much smoother process.

SME Manufacturers and Wholesalers are a great fit for Cin7 whether the business makes the products themselves or outsource the work.

Why?

Production job loader – lets businesses book production jobs out for existing sales orders

Purchasing reporting – forecast production job load for existing sales orders. Let’s you know what you need to make based on sales so they can be fulfilled.

Materials Required Reporting – Run a purchase report based on open production jobs to buy required materials.

Swappable BOMs – For example, when selling configurable products like a chair that has the option to switch the colours or fabrics, it is still counted as one product, there are just multi options per BOM.

Streamline Operations – Automatically trigger production jobs based on minimum/maximum orders or dynamic sales calculations. Create custom production jobs based on a specific sales order or a production run based on multiple, consolidated sales orders.

Standard cost calculation for materials – When you create a quote or sales order, track actual costs and profitability after a sale is completed.

Contract Manufacturers – If you use contract manufacturers, you can apply fees, costs of labour or other costs to your Production Jobs to accurately reflect the cost of the products that you have made.

Fashion Retailers:

We have worked with many fashion brands and have found Cin7 to be the perfect fit for this sector.

Omnichannel – Built-in omnichannel allows the use of click and collect, shop from a store, gift cards and loyalty points.

Marketplace integration – With integrations with Shopify, Magento and Amazon it allows a great platform for fashion retailers to sell their products.

Continued Benefits:

Built-in Electronic Data Interchange: For businesses that sell products to larger retailers around the world, an undeniably vital feature that Cin7 provides is its built-in EDI. Unlike many other inventory systems which would require you to set this up with a third-party, they integrate with B2B and B2C online marketplaces including major retailers around the world, including Amazon to be able to help businesses seamlessly integrate and automate in real-time.

An example of Cin7’s EDI working so well: Soon after us implementing Cin7 for Selectequip, they were able to win a contract with a well-known retailer due to the built-in EDI this system provides. By having this competitive advantage built-in to the inventory system, it makes businesses in a competitive market stand-out from the crowd.

Bill of Materials (BOM): The ability to set-up bill of material (BOMs) means manufacturing businesses are able to track raw materials, components or ingredients. Easily turn BOMs into production jobs or upload BOMs in sales orders when your selling bundles or products with variable components.

Cost of Goods Sold (COGS): To find the Gross Profit of your product sales, you subtract your COGS from your sales which leads you with a gross profit. If your COGS are not accurate, this can lead to complications with business decisions and spending if calculated profits are inaccurate.

In Cin7, the COGS are done at the point of generating a sales invoice. This is particularly useful as income and expenses are locked into the same month, allowing for more accurate monthly COGS and accounts.

As well as this, Cin7 links transactions on purchases which makes it easier to allocate 3rd party costs to the goods that are landing in your warehouse. Some examples are freight and customs and duties insurance.

Cin7 also helps track accurate landed costs, which increase the accuracy of COGS as it takes in to account any delivery, customs, duty, insurance or any other 3rd party costs. Using the linked transaction fields, cost can be linked from one PO (e.g duty costs) to another (PO for the goods). The landed costs can be distributed across multiple line items based on either weight or value.

Warehouse Management: Cin7 provides full visibility so stock levels can be synced and viewed on multiple websites and marketplaces, meaning the correct level of stock is always available, removing the risks of overselling.

Customisation: As we’ve learnt, no two clients are the same and will require the ability to customise documents. Cin7 offers the most customisable options for Sales Orders, Purchase Orders, Credit Notes, Packing Slips and other customer-facing documents. To make each document unique to the business. Of course, all changes are reversible by clicking Reset Template or selecting from your history log. Changes will be reverted and updated to the most recent template.

Cin7 is arguably one of the most powerful and customisable inventory systems available to SMEs. But it does come with a cost. Starting at $299 a month, this system is one of the most expensive but the benefits to the businesses we have worked with like Selectequip and SE Simons prove the value.